Kobo H2O

[Maillemom]

Hi - I have a new Kobo H2O and I'm having a slight problem. I would like to be able when adding my books to automatically convert to kepub. I have the kobo extended plugin enabled but it is not working.

My other issue I would like when adding the book to the device is to create a collection: author name - series name with series number - title in the collection. I have a myshelves column and have tried every combination I can think of but nothing is working.

I have tried the metadata plugboard but not having much success. I do get a collection with the author's name but not the series name and at the same time I get a collection with the series name. Both have the same books in them.

I am on the latest version of Calibre and Kobo version.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Trice

[PeterT]

Sigh. The advice to use a column called myshelves was purely an example of how I did it. Nothing prevents you using multiple columns in the field in the driver configuration, separated by commas. I believe I use at a minimum #myshelves, series (observe the difference; user defined columns are prefixed by a #, built in columns are not).

Also remember that if you want to see series info in the library listing you need to reconnect the Kobo after it has processed the newly added books.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Sigh. The advice to use a column called myshelves was purely an example of how I did it. Nothing prevents you using multiple columns in the field in the driver configuration, separated by commas. I believe I use at a minimum #myshelves, series (observe the difference; user defined columns are prefixed by a #, built in columns are not).

Also remember that if you want to see series info in the library listing you need to reconnect the Kobo after it has processed the newly added books.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the reply. BTW MyShelves works just fine for me. I think my main problem is that I want to do 2 different things and I'm getting confused what I need to change to get the results that I want.

I want to create a collection for example Roberts, Nora - Sisters. In the plug in under collections I have author_sort, series. It does create a Roberts, Nora collection but it also creates a Sisters collection. The books in the collection just have the title but not the series number. Under metadata plug boards I have ePub | kobotouch = {series_index:0>2s|| - } {title}.

I have playing with this all day and still can't get it to work.

Thanks again for your reply.
Trice

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Maillemom

Thanks for the reply. BTW MyShelves works just fine for me. I think my main problem is that I want to do 2 different things and I'm getting confused what I need to change to get the results that I want.

I want to create a collection for example Roberts, Nora - Sisters. In the plug in under collections I have author_sort, series. It does create a Roberts, Nora collection but it also creates a Sisters collection. The books in the collection just have the title but not the series number. Under metadata plug boards I have ePub | kobotouch = {series_index:0>2s|| - } {title}.

The collections are created for each value in each column in the "Collection columns". If there isn't a existing column that has the values you need, you need to add a custom that does. For what you want, you need a "Column built from other columns" with the template:

{author_sort} - {series}

Then add the column to the "Collection columns" setting in the driver. You probably want to remove the separte "series".

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The collections are created for each value in each column in the "Collection columns". If there isn't a existing column that has the values you need, you need to add a custom that does. For what you want, you need a "Column built from other columns" with the template:

{author_sort} - {series}

Then add the column to the "Collection columns" setting in the driver. You probably want to remove the separte "series".

Thank you for your response. I haven't had time to try to solve my problem. I hope to look at it tonight.

Thanks again,
Trice

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The collections are created for each value in each column in the "Collection columns". If there isn't a existing column that has the values you need, you need to add a custom that does. For what you want, you need a "Column built from other columns" with the template:

{author_sort} - {series}

Then add the column to the "Collection columns" setting in the driver. You probably want to remove the separte "series".

I have to admit I am very confused. So I created a custom column named custcol. So how do I configure this? Do I put the

{author_sort} - {series}

in the template section?

When you say to add the columns to the "collection columns" in the driver. Is the driver the plugin? The metadata plug board?

I have tried to follow the documentation but I still can't get anything to work except now when I transfer my books it is now titling them - 01 -title, which is close to what I want except for the leading - which I can't find where it's coming from.

I'm sorry for all the questions but I am beyond frustrated. I did have most of this working at one point and decided that I needed to change things and now I can't even get it back to the way it was working.

I really do appreciate your help, more than you can know.

Thanks,
Trice

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Maillemom

I have to admit I am very confused. So I created a custom column named custcol. So how do I configure this? Do I put the

{author_sort} - {series}

in the template section?

Yes, that is what I was saying to do.

When you say to add the columns to the "collection columns" in the driver. Is the driver the plugin? The metadata plug board?

The driver is the driver. It is a plugin, but it is a special type of plugin that is used by calibre to communicate with the devices. The driver knows how books are stored on the device and translates between that and calibre. Each type of device will have a different driver. You can configure the driver through the preferences, but the simplest way to get the correct driver is when the device is connected. At that time, right-click on the device button in the toolbar and select the option to configure the driver. This will open a dialog with all the options. For a Kobo device, the dialog is tabbed, and the options for the collections are on the second tab.

A metadata plugboard is used by calibre to change the metadata in a book when it is copied outside of the calibre library. Again, they are device specific and are intended to overcome deficiencies in how the different devices handle the metadata. The most common change is to add the series information into the book title. This is done because, other than Kobos, none of the devices can display the series information separately.

I have tried to follow the documentation but I still can't get anything to work except now when I transfer my books it is now titling them - 01 -title, which is close to what I want except for the leading - which I can't find where it's coming from.

If you show us what you have in the metadata plugboard for that, and tells us what you really want, we should be able to tell you what is wrong.

[Maillemom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes, that is what I was saying to do.

The driver is the driver. It is a plugin, but it is a special type of plugin that is used by calibre to communicate with the devices. The driver knows how books are stored on the device and translates between that and calibre. Each type of device will have a different driver. You can configure the driver through the preferences, but the simplest way to get the correct driver is when the device is connected. At that time, right-click on the device button in the toolbar and select the option to configure the driver. This will open a dialog with all the options. For a Kobo device, the dialog is tabbed, and the options for the collections are on the second tab.

A metadata plugboard is used by calibre to change the metadata in a book when it is copied outside of the calibre library. Again, they are device specific and are intended to overcome deficiencies in how the different devices handle the metadata. The most common change is to add the series information into the book title. This is done because, other than Kobos, none of the devices can display the series information separately.

If you show us what you have in the metadata plugboard for that, and tells us what you really want, we should be able to tell you what is wrong.

I have been able to load books with them being named series number - title. I did this by populating the kobotouchextended = {series_index:0>2s|| -}{title}. Works like a charm.

I can't get it to create a collection. In the kobotouchextended plugin on the collections, covers & uploads I have {author_sort} - {series}. I don't get an error message, the books transfer but the collection doesn't get created.

Do I need to configure this somewhere else?

As suggested I created a custom column but the column display instead of author - series I got author first name, series, author last name, so I can't use that.

So close yet still so far.

Thanks,
Trice

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Maillemom

I can't get it to create a collection. In the kobotouchextended plugin on the collections, covers & uploads I have {author_sort} - {series}. I don't get an error message, the books transfer but the collection doesn't get created.

The "Collections column" only takes column names. You can't use a template there. That's why I suggested using the custom column.

Do I need to configure this somewhere else?

As suggested I created a custom column but the column display instead of author - series I got author first name, series, author last name, so I can't use that.

The template I suggested for the custom column was "{author_sort} - {series}". That is going to produce something like "Butcher, Jim - The Dresden Files". The way that gets handled by the driver is to split the value at the commas and create a collection for each part. That's working as designed and changing it would probably break a lot of other peoples collections. It might work to change the column type to "Column built from other columns, behaves like tags". I can't think what that will do if there is a comma in the values produced. And I can't test at the moment.

The nearest I can think of quickly is "{author} - {series}". That should produce "Jim Butcher - The Dresden Files", but probably doesn't give the sort order you want.

[Maillemom]

Davidfor - thanks for the reply! I did create a custom column using 'Custom built from other columns, behaves like tags' using {author_sort} - {series} and got author first name, series, last name even though my author sort was reading Roberts, Nora.

So in my Myshelves I entered author last name_author first name and changed my #mycustcol to myshelves - series and I get Roberts_Nora - Sisters as a collection and in the collection I get 02 - Heaven and Earth. So it's all good even though I'm not thrilled with the underscore.

My next challenge is for the books that don't belong to a series, singles I call them. I get Roberts_Nora - for which I need to get rid of the -. I did try entering Singles in the series and all of the books get 1 for series_index and it works I just don't love it but I can live with it.

Thanks so much for you help. I appreciated every response and the time you took to answer my posts.

Trice

[davidfor]

Replacing the commas with an underscore is ugly, but it works.

For your column, I suggest:

{author_sort:'re($,',\s', '_')'}{series:| - |}

For your example, you will get:

- "Roberts_Nora - Sisters"
- "Roberts_Nora" for books without a series.

[Maillemom]

DavidFor - Thanks! It works great and now I can rid of one of my custom columns.

I did manage to figure out how to save my library to disk using the same file structure and title naming by using {#custcol}/{series_index:0>2s|| -}{title}/{title} in the saving books to disk.

Thanks again for your help and patience.

Trice